Novel RNase H Inhibitors Blocking RNA-directed Strand Displacement DNA Synthesis by HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase

In retroviruses, strand displacement DNA-dependent DNA polymerization catalyzed by the viral reverse transcriptase (RT) is required to synthesize double-stranded proviral DNA. In addition, strand displacement during RNA-dependent DNA synthesis is critical to generate high-quality cDNA for use in mol...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Martín-Alonso, Samara, Kang, Dongwei, Martínez del Río, Javier, Luczkowiak, Joanna, Frutos-Beltrán, Estrella, Zhang, Lina, Cheng, Xiqiang, Liu, Xinyong, Zhan, Peng, Menéndez-Arias, Luis
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2022
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/304353
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/304353
https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85125710619
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Strand displacement
HIV
RNase H
RNase H inhibitors
Reverse transcriptase
Description
Summary:In retroviruses, strand displacement DNA-dependent DNA polymerization catalyzed by the viral reverse transcriptase (RT) is required to synthesize double-stranded proviral DNA. In addition, strand displacement during RNA-dependent DNA synthesis is critical to generate high-quality cDNA for use in molecular biology and biotechnology. In this work, we show that the loss of RNase H activity due to inactivating mutations in HIV-1 RT (e.g. D443N or E478Q) has no significant effect on strand displacement while copying DNA templates, but has a large impact on DNA polymerization in reactions carried out with RNA templates. Similar effects were observed with β-thujaplicinol and other RNase H active site inhibitors, including compounds with dual activity (i.e., characterized also as inhibitors of HIV-1 integrase and/or the RT DNA polymerase). Among them, dual inhibitors of HIV-1 RT DNA polymerase/RNase H activities, containing a 7-hydroxy-6-nitro-2H-chromen-2-one pharmacophore were found to be very potent and effective strand displacement inhibitors in RNA-dependent DNA polymerization reactions. These findings might be helpful in the development of transcriptomics technologies to obtain more uniform read coverages when copying long RNAs and for the construction of more representative libraries avoiding biases towards 5' and 3' ends, while providing valuable information for the development of novel antiretroviral agents.